(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
During her nomination to the Supreme Court, there was a mad scramble to find some real dirt on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s gleaming record. Upon taking her rightful seat at the highest court in the nation, she’s dazzled onlookers with her legal acumen and questioning that gets right to the heart of the matter. This has only increased the desire to know more about her. What was growing up like for the first Black female Supreme Court justice? Who did she look up to? Does she prefer the show Living Single to Friends? While I am unsure if all of these questions will be answered, I’m sure at least one of them will be discussed in her upcoming memoir. From Indiana Lawyer:
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is working on a memoir. Jackson, the first Black woman appointed to the court, is calling the book “Lovely One.”
“Mine has been an unlikely journey,” Jackson said in a statement released Thursday by Random House.
“But the path was paved by courageous women and men in whose footsteps I placed my own, road warriors like my own parents, and also luminaries in the law, whose brilliance and fortitude lit my way. This memoir marries the public record of my life with what is less known. It will be a transparent accounting of what it takes to rise through the ranks of the legal profession, especially as a woman of color with an unusual name and as a mother and a wife striving to reconcile the demands of a high-profile career with the private needs of my loved ones.”
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I’m really looking forward to the naming section. I was once doing a community service event and saw a “well meaning” co-mentor ask one of our students their name. The student, as one would expect, told her. Not five seconds after hearing the name for the first time, my co-mentor asked if they could give the young adult they just met a new nickname to make it a little easier on themselves. Having none of it, I told my student that part of growing up and being social includes learning names. If people can get names like Chakovsky, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Palahniuk, and all the other names that sound like kindergarteners playing piano after one too many juice boxes, they could learn hers too. And it is worth harping on because (nick)naming isn’t just a thing that impacts children’s self-image, it can harm their job prospects as adults too.
We find that discrimination varies tremendously across firms.
On average, distinctively Black names are about 10% less likely to be contacted, but some firms discriminate much more. In fact, the top 20% of firms account for ~50% of total discrimination! pic.twitter.com/ZBTjiFldzj
— Evan Rose (@evankrose) July 26, 2021
And to think that people face discrimination over something as simple as a benediction.
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No release date has been set for “Lovely One.” Jackson, 52, was born Ketanji Onyika Brown. The book’s title comes from the English translation of Ketanji Onyika, the name suggested by an aunt who at the time was a Peace Corps worker in West Africa.
Not only is that a lovely name — pun fully intended — that is a hell of a title to start one’s career as an author with.
In announcing Jackson’s book, Random House called it a story she tells with “refreshing honesty, lively wit, and warmth.”
“Justice Jackson invites readers into her life and world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her,” the announcement reads in part, “from growing up in Miami with educator parents who broke barriers during the 1960s to honing her voice as an oratory champion to performing improv and participating in pivotal student movements at Harvard to balancing the joys and demands of marriage and motherhood while advancing in Big Law — and, finally, to making history upon joining the nation’s highest court.”
I look forward to reading it! Or at least the Quimbee of it. Supreme Court Justice memoirs count as dicta, right?
Justice Jackson working on a memoir, titled ‘Lovely One’ [Indiana Lawyer]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.